Disruptive Advertising

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the content and marketing manager of a company that sells parts and offers repair services for floor care equipment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Disruptive Advertising?

We required online advertising services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Disruptive Advertising is in charge of our online advertising, which includes PPC, social media marketing on Facebook, email marketing, and, more recently, Amazon marketing. They create content for the campaigns and manage them, create email templates, and automate the email marketing campaigns. Regarding our PPC efforts, we focus on Google Ads and Facebook Ads, and we recently started our Bing advertising efforts as well.

What is the team composition?

We work with Derek (Enterprise Account Manager), who manages our account overall; Scott (Senior Marketing Consultant), who manages our ad budgets; Andrew (Marketing Consultant), who handles our email marketing; and Jesse (Enterprise Marketing Manager) and Colby (VP of Client Services), who help with Amazon marketing.

How did you come to work with Disruptive Advertising?

Disruptive Advertising was already working for my company when I took over my current position, so I don’t know how they found them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Disruptive Advertising around December 2018, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Our ROAS is currently at about 4X–5X, and we’ve also seen an increase in our lead generation and conversion rates.

How did Disruptive Advertising perform from a project management standpoint?

Disruptive Advertising is great at meeting deadlines and staying within budget. At the beginning of each month, they provide a strategy based on our goals, and we have weekly meetings throughout the month to review where we stand compared to those goals.

For project management, we use a data studio tool that Disruptive Advertising created for us, where we can see and manage our performance. Additionally, we communicate via email and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Disruptive Advertising’s responsiveness is their main strength. They’re very receptive to our ideas and very good at explaining everything in detail.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to the ideas that Disruptive Advertising brings to the table.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the marketing specialist over the email program at a B2B SaaS company in the financial sector.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We wanted to build an email nurturing program for our prospects, helping to improve our funnel and conversions. We hired Disruptive to advise on our strategy and create emails, workflows, and improve our lifecycle.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched online and recieved quotes from three agencies. After deciding Disruptive was our top choice, we met with three previous clients, who were happily referred to us from the team. Even though these clients parted ways, they all provided promising reviews. We appreciated the transparency from the company and willingness to connect us with people who would give their honest opinion. In the end, we knew they were the clear choice.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They first did an audit of our current email program, marketing and sales funnels, lifecycle process and CRM tagging. They provided us with a map outlining our current process and presented ideas for ways to improve and add on to what we were already doing. We had consultation meetings with various teams until a clear path forward was established.

We met weekly, with one meeting a month dedicated to outlining the next month's strategy and reviewing performance from the items already in place. We worked on a monthly basis, adjusting our goals and deliverables as needed. They were very communicative throughout the process and provided quality work.

For our email program, we would meet to discuss the goal of the email, how it would build upon our current program, and what the design would be. They would then present the draft which I would edit or approve. Disruptive would implement this email in our CRM and create the corresponding workflows. The process was easy and timely.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with an account manager and lifecycle specialist.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our marketing and sales teams used the email program to help move leads through the funnel. Our goal was to convert prospects to scheduling time with our sales team. The email program in place resulted in a 6% conversion, much higher than current industry standard.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had four meetings a month, with deliverables for the month outlined in the first meeting. We communicated on a day-to-day basis through email and they would let me know well in advance of any schedule changes or conflict. Communication was timely and succinct and deadlines were always met on time.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The marketer we worked with was always up-to-date on the latest trends in the market and was happy to provide us information and education as soon as possible. She adjusted our program for seasonality premptively and did a great job making sure the health and efficacy of our program was top notch.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I would have liked there to be a content writer on the team. The copy in the emails they wrote was all directly pulled from our own marketing materials. It would have been nice to have a different opinion consulting on best practices for positioning our brand. The team is full of industry experts in every area including lifecycle management, design, lead generation, etc, but not content writing.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner of a small online specialty hardware store.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

I hired disruptive to make sure I had no worries with my companies advertising. I have a lot to worry about and this is one thing that never has to cross my mind.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I chose to keep working with disruptive after the purchase of the business as their track record showed just how much business it brought the company.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Disruptive and Joey take care of all the advertising for my company. They make sure my products on my website are always the first to show on google when someone searches for specific key words. It is a stress free relationship and I know Joey always has my back when it comes to this part of the business.

What was the team composition?

I speak with Joey at Disruptive once every two weeks, but I can reach out to him anytime of the day, any day of the week and get a timely response.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Sales are always great. There are times when I want to reach out to Joey to tell him slow it down and give me a break.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have great working relationship.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their commitment to making sure I am always satisfied with their work is impressive. Always going above and beyond what they are asked.

Is there any area for improvement or anything that could have been done differently?

No areas for improvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Ephesoft’s Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) platform and data enrichment solutions automate document-centric processes to maximize operational efficiency and human productivity for enterprises and the public sector. I am the Director of Growth Marketing. I look after demand generation to ensure Ephesoft brand visibility in the marketplace and generate ready-to-buy leads for Sales to meet company targets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising, and what were your goals?

We hired Disruptive Advertising to kickstart our first-ever global Google Ads PPC program. Our goals were to bring in net-new names into the database and bottom-of-funnel /ready-to-buy leads to Sales.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Disruptive Advertising was a referral from our web agency, BigLeap.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Our engagement with Disruptive began an internal meeting to discuss our system and resource capabilities and bandwidth. We also discussed our short term and long term goals. We then had a discovery call with the Disruptive Account Manager to discuss our requirements. Disruptive then helped us conduct keyword research, performed an analysis of our competitors and did an audit of our systems (Salesforce, Pardot and Wordpress). From there, the team worked with us to build the campaign strategy, keywords, accompanying ads, key KPIs and requirements for our backend setup in Salesforce, Pardot and Wordpress. After some testing, the team at Disruptive (Becca and Tim) put the campaign in-market and built us performance dashboards. We get weekly campaign updates from Becca and meet bi-weekly to discuss current performance and areas of improvement/opportunity.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We were assigned a Project Manager (Becca) for our day-to-day campaign management and Operations technical resource (Colin) to ensure our systems were optimized to track KPIs and measure success.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Since implementing Google Ads PPC in 2021, we received 152% more sourced global opportunities from this campaign than initially anticipated. This campaign is the best performing marketing campaign.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Disruptive has been great at managing our goals, expectations and always meeting our discussed deadlines. We use email and our bi-weekly meeting to communicate. Becca, our campaign project manager is great@ She’s very organized, knowledgeable and always delivers on her tasks. I rarely have to follow-up with her which is very much appreciated. She really works with us like an extended member of our marketing team. We really enjoy working with her. 

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The team at Disruptive is impressive. I’ve worked with many agencies throughout my career—big and small. Disruptive is top-tier. It doesn’t matter if you are a large or small account, the Team always delivers and makes your account a priority.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of sales and marketing of a conglomerate of brands selling direct-to-consumer products online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Disruptive Advertising?

Firstly, we wanted to have our Google Ads account unsuspended because we had troubles with that and couldn’t work with Google on our own. Additionally, we wanted to run more profitable advertising campaigns.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Disruptive Advertising provided us with strategic and account management services, focusing on our Google Ads account. We initially provided them with information about our brands, and they also did some market research.

For the campaigns they created, they first came up with an advertising strategy. After our approval, they implemented that strategy on our Google Ads. They were also in charge of copywriting and content creation, choosing the keywords to use. Additionally, they chose the type of campaign depending on the strategy.

What is the team composition?

After getting set up, we only worked with one person from Disruptive Advertising, who was an account strategist. However, I know that other people were working on our project behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Disruptive Advertising?

Disruptive Advertising came as a referral; I heard that they did good work.

How much have you invested with them?

We paid Disruptive Advertising about $3,500 per month on advertising management. In total, we spent around $28,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2021–April 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Disruptive Advertising solved the issue of our Google Ads account being suspended, which was a very successful result by itself. After that, we also saw some success in our cost per conversion; we saw it decreasing month by month. However, as far as the profitability of the ads, the most we could achieve was to break even, which meant that we were still losing money month by month after paying for their services. Thus, we decided to end our relationship. 

How did Disruptive Advertising perform from a project management standpoint?

Disruptive Advertising was very clear, and their level of communication and transparency was good. We were very happy working with them because they were very professional and timely, and they worked relatively fast. Our only issue was that we weren’t seeing the growth we hoped for.

Regarding our communication, Disruptive Advertising was very responsive to emails, and we had weekly Zoom calls to review the project. They also sent me documents with the strategies they wanted to implement so that I could approve or disapprove them. They also asked for my approval for any major changes they wanted to make to the account, which I appreciated.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Disruptive Advertising had a more regular call cadence compared to other companies we’ve worked with; we really appreciated the regular communication.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t know if this is something that Disruptive Advertising could have done better, but if they had managed the campaigns differently so that we could see success, we would have stuck with them. However, they did a great job, and I feel like they did everything in their power to make the campaigns perform well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you have a large advertising budget of over $10,000 per month, I recommend working with them. However, if you have a smaller budget, maybe they’re not an option for you. We were spending a small budget on our campaigns, but their management fee was costly, so we were spending more than what we were getting back.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Marketing Director for a CCW company. We create and syndicate a ton of content and manufacture CCW holsters and related gear.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We were looking to fine tune and outsource our Facebook and YouTube advertising.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Besides the fact that they are local to our state, they have worked with some other companies in our network. We like people who have worked in our nuanced industry.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

After a few discovery sessions they took what we said and ran with it. We did have to provide/produce some of the creative because our specific products and industry requires a lot of nuanced knowledge. But that's been fine! They still do great work perfecting the ads themselves. They set weekly meetings to make sure we are getting the most out of our ads and discuss strategies.

What was the team composition?

We get to work with our own pro that I'm guessing is assigned to us based on our needs and industry.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have had many ads that set a pretty high bar for effectiveness. Some that perform much better then anyone could have expected.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I really appreciate the weekly meetings and updates. But more importantly I appreciate that I can reach out with any problems and they do the same, proactively.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We appreciate their proactive approach and constant attention to our account. It's obvious that they really care.

Is there any area for improvement or anything that could have been done differently?

Other ways of communication, outside of email might be nice. Also a better way to provide assets.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Marketing Assistant at a custom window and door manufacturer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a reliable and efficient group to manage our Google and Microsoft ads. Not only to generate traffic for our everyday business but also to amp up traffic for coming soon new releases.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We met with Disruptive Advertising after shopping around with other companies in the running. Disruptive was the one that stood out most not only with their knowledge and spot on ideas to our ultimate goals but also with their friendly, quick, and responsive team.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

After our initial kick off meeting, Disruptive Advertising was quick to understand our business needs and goals. From jump, the team was able to show their work and take our vision beyond what we had expected in the best way possible. For nearly two years, we have been seeing nothing but excellent results with Google Ad and Microsoft Ad charts.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We have worked and are still working with an account manager, marketing consultant, and creative strategists.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have never seen as much traffic to our website as we do now in the past. Ad clicks are up by measures and an overall jump in web clicks has shown itself since DA took us on.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Web meetings are done on a bi-weekly schedule. If any questions or concerns are brought to our attention in between these meetings, questions are answered in a timely manner. Tristin Smith truly has changed the way we show our online presence for the absolute best. Working with Tristin is such a pleasure and we can count on him to take us to the top.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The attentive ways the team at Disruptive Advertising goes above and beyond my expectations. From Day 1, we never felt an urge to move on to a different company. We are beyond happy with our team at Disruptive Advertising.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None that I can present.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the marketing manager for Panda Windows and Doors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising, and what were your goals?

We were not having good luck with our past PPC agency, both in terms of results and responsiveness. We'd done massive improvements to our website to improve our lead conversions and wanted to generate as many qualified leads as possible in short time.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

After doing our research we selected Disruptive Advertising. They were extremely responsive and had great reviews.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

We had many pre-launch meetings to ensure they understood our product mix, target audience, budget, and goals.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked closely with a few different reps and each one was great.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our leads have more than doubled, despite a tremendous amount of new competition in our space. They also helped us create a datastudio portal for analytics which enables us to take a deep dive into our campaigns with clear, simple reporting. Our campaigns continue to be optimized and improve month over month.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They had a deep understanding of our industry. Their team is committed week after week to helping us improve the return on our PPC investment. Tristin, our most recent rep, is a true member of our team and always handles any requests quickly.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their commitment to staying on top of PPC trends makes them well worth the investment. We don't worry about budget waste with them monitoring our accounts.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

no

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I have been consulting with a non-profit on improving their advertisement pipelines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We were looking to revamp our advertising and improve our digital reach. Our previous marketing efforts were not able to connect with new audiences and were unsure about interpreting qualitative data. Our CRM intake was also lacking in engaging email campaigning and correspondence. Disruptive was hired to help audit and propose solutions for those services. We engaged disruptive to also produce and lead content for those services in a unified campaign that we would A/B test.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I work with a few businesses to augment their production pipelines, and their marketing needs have ranged from digital service to education. I've worked with Disruptive in two separate companies and manged them directly in one.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

The first scope item was to audit our current pipeline to identify opportunities and recommend solutions. Disruptive was open and honest with their assessments and provided adequate solutions that were performance driven and budget conscious. From there, we engaged them for 6 months to build campaigns that yielded a colossal increase in our leads and quality of our lead pipeline.

What was the team composition?

I worked closely with:

• Madison as my strategist for social
• Jonni as my strategist for CRM + email campaigns

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

I've worked with a few agencies in the past, but what I love about Disruptive is they aren't afraid to say no and push for excellence. Clients that try to micromanage or influence their performance-driven results will find this not a great fit. They aren't afraid to let the data speak clearly and to pivot in strategy. If you want a clear direction without biases, Madison and Jonni will keep you on trajectories for your goals.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our workflow is that we build our strategy and interpret results bi-weekly, so we get a good sample measure before big decisions are made. We're always one step ahead of the next iteration and proactively planning instead of reacting. Madison and Jonni's ability to work between their two departments keeps goals in a well-meshed rhythm

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I will always say that there's the most power in any company rooted in their people. It's the experience of the people that makes this company easy to work with. They will treat you like a partner, not a client. If anyone cannot find the value in that, you're not ready to grow.

Is there any area for improvement or anything that could have been done differently?

My only hindsight is wishing I had more resources to throw their way to help us grow more aggressively.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner of a consumer product company. One of our company's major plan this year is to leverage paid ads to grow our sales on Shopify. We sold $5m last year through other online channels, so it's market proven products. But we don't have much history on Shopify sales, facebook ads or google ads.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising, and what were your goals?

We hire them to manage google ads and facebook ads for us.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We carefully researched, screened and interewed 7 or 8 agencies, all of which are highly reputable, top agencies, and finally landed on Disruptive Advertising to manage our google ads and facebook ads. I came from a research background so I've always been pretty confident in my research and results.

At the time of signing, it was a big relief to me and I thought I found a good partner that will - not to say take me to the moon, but at least grow the ad sales gradually.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

Instead of to the moon, it went straight the other way. And at the end of the first 30 days, and on the exact date of my 39th birthday, I had to terminate the engagment and their reactions shows no remorse for their poor performance. Here's the rundown of everything: After signing, there're only weekly sync up meetings.

The first week is onboarding meeting, and meeting with the team. Week 2 is strategy meeting that's filled mostly with high level template slides, and Week 3 is streagy review with only 2 slides for the facebook ads (1 slide for really simple creative demos, and the other slide for campaign structure as their strategy).

Their facebook ad strategy is so amatuer that they are proposing the same set of creatives for each funnel. After week 3, the facebook ad manager had some family urgent matter then just disappeared in communications. Personally, family comes first to me as well, and you have my understanding, my best wishes, my whatever.

But professionally, isn't it the reason why I want to work with a big agency that your agency can absorb this kind of individual incidence, and not letting it affect your clients? At the end of the engagement, facebook ad strategy was never revised, hence never aproved. None of the facebook ads were run.

And they rejected my request of refund. On the google ad side, that's where their 150-people-agency's business originally built on. My google ad manager said she had 9 years experience managing google ads. They should be good.

So after waited for 3 weeks, although I still had concerns about their google ads settings, I was ready to give it a try - after all i naively thought we gonna start running ads and making big money from day 1, and by then it was already 3 weeks gone with nothing. We ran ads in week 4, and over the course of 8 days, it was $2k ad spend, with zero sales.

To give you a benchmark, before signing with them, I experimented with google ads myself for three weeks, and I got $2.6k ad sales with $2.4k ad spend. They get ZERO. Then I got confused, is it the lack of expertise, or the lack of commitment? (there's nothing wrong with the website settings, they tested conversion trackings, and I had couple of organic sales during the same period).

It's a quite remarkable result isn't it. I don't think any other agency that I interviewed before would be remotely close to achieve the same result with a $2k google ad spend. Disruptive Advertising is truly one of a kind, and I'm even prouder of my research skills now.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

One team lead. One google ad manager, one facebook manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The rest aren't much interesting anyways. I expressed my frustration and their senior team responded quickly and nicely, and offered to no longer have me bond to the 6 months contract, but rejected my refund request.

They charged me $3,500 for the first month of facebook ad management, where they spent the first three weeks to develop the amatuer plan, and disappeared in the forth week. And charged me the same $3,500 for the first month of google ads management, which burned another $2k ad spend with zero, again ZERO ad sales.

For those deliverables and performance, they gave me ZERO refund. I hope these experience and the price I paid would be educational to whoever's looking for the paid ads agency now.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Not much effective.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are good at saying anything nicely and deliver everything poorly.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Give me the refund at least.

Company Responses

The vendor responded on April 19, 2022.

Thank you so much for your candid feedback. It helps us understand where we fell short and how we can improve in the future. We are sorry that we weren't able to fulfill on your expectations and truly wish you the best in your future endeavors.